The Human Side of Things: Carlisle Cullen
by JohnGreenGirl
Summary: Haven't you ever wondered what the human lives of the Cullens were like? Not just the bits and pieces we learned along the way in the story, but the whole thing? Read and find out! The first in this series follows the leader of the Cullen clan, father-figure Carlisle Cullen.
1. Carlisle Chapter One

The Human Side of Things

Carlisle Cullen

1645

When little Carlisle Cullen is five years old, he sees a vampire for the first time. He doesn't know that is what she is; he only knows that she is the prettiest lady he's ever seen and she talks to him in a low voice that sounds like music.

"_Mon petit_," she says, patting his head of light gold waves, "you must remember: posy keeps the plague away. Keep this in your pocket, and the angels will bless you." After tucking the sprig into the pocket over his heart, she presses a kiss to Carlisle's forehead. Even though he can see now her eyes are red, not brown like he thought, he isn't afraid. How could anyone so lovely be bad?

"Thank you, Madame," his father says, turning Carlisle away from the woman. "We appreciate your blessing in a time when so many have died. May the angels watch over you, too." Carlisle's father never lets him talk to people for long. He says there are too many demons in human form, and that Carlisle should trust no one, especially 'unfortunates'. The unfortunates, he says, are deformed because the devil has such a tight hold on their souls.

Even after the posies all die and are dried ghosts of what they once were, Carlisle keeps the sprig from the woman in a drawer near his bed. She was so nice, and he wishes, deep down inside, that she were his mother.


	2. Carlisle Chapter Two

1651

For his eleventh birthday, Carlisle's father gives him a rosary. "You will need it, my boy, for you are almost a man. In just two years, you will join me and our brothers on our hunts. This will keep you safe, because it was your mother's. She watches over you now from heaven."

He feels safer with it so close to his heart, especially since his other birthday gift was a book written by his father and his followers about the demons they hunt. Carlisle is supposed to study it, but it gives him nightmares. Instead, he leaves it in his room and goes to play with the other young boys. Even though he is a pastor's son, and can never be a knight, that is the game he and the others play.

Carlisle doesn't want to hunt demons. He wants to wear suits of armor and have his own horse. Horses are the only envy he holds against the merchant and noble sons. When you have a horse, you can go where you want and do what you want. When you have a horse, you don't have to say in London your whole life.

Play time doesn't last long, though, because His Majesty the King is holding a parade for his son. So instead of _playing_ knights, Carlisle will get to see real knights. At noon, his father puts Carlisle on top of two boxes so that he can see over the heads of others.

With his uninterrupted view, Carlisle can see the king and queen, riding tall and proud on their horses. He can see the court, with the dukes and earls and ladies. One of the ladies, a lady in waiting, he thinks, is too familiar. She has dark hair and fair skin and eyes so brown they look…red. And then he realizes, as she winks one of those red eyes at him, that she is the French woman he saw six years ago.

She looks just as young now as she did then.

Carlisle thinks of the rosary he got that day, and smiles at the woman as she passes. Even though his father has never told him what his mother looked like, Carlisle decides that this woman must be her, showing up in his life to check on him.


	3. Carlisle Chapter Three

1653

Tonight is the first time Carlisle will come along for a hunt. He has his own belt with loops, now, so that he can carry the stake he was trained to use and the cross that will burn the demons, and the sword that will let him kill without getting too close.

He is no longer afraid. Now he is thirteen; he is a man, and men are not afraid.

So it is with great courage that he faces the night. It is cloudy, and there is no moon, so they must carry torches. Carlisle gets to have one, which means he will be on the front lines. "What do you do if you come upon one, and they get too close?"

"Sword first, and if that fails, the stake. Only use the cross as the last effort." This has been drilled into his head for two years. Carlisle thinks he could repeat it in his sleep. But this means he is prepared and that he will do well on his first-ever hunt.

It doesn't take long for the men to reach the house that they will siege. The older men have been watching for months, and they have come to the conclusion that the people who reside there are the dreaded vampires. As his father knocks on the door, Carlisle says a silent prayer to his mother to keep all of them safe.

The wife of the household opens the door. Carlisle's father grabs her arm roughly and pulls her into the circle of men in her yard. They restrain her at once, and his father waves him forward. "Get the husband. I will check for children to take to the orphanage. You know these vile creatures can't have their own. They steal human ones to feed on, and then blame sickness for the deaths as these have."

Carlisle does as he is told. At thirteen, he is actually bigger than this man and that makes him feel even more grown up. Like he has seen his father do thousands of times, he pulls the man's arms back and forces him through the doorway.

"Carlisle! You will read our scripture to condemn, and then you will have your first kill." Practically glowing with pride, Carlisle recites the words without even looking at the book. Then he draws his sword as the other men immobilize the male vampire, and with the clean stroke he was taught, he decapitates him.

Almost immediately, the smile fades from his face. Vampires are supposed to be dead. If this man were already dead, why is he bleeding so much? Why does Carlisle have this man's blood splattered on his face? "Now the other, Carlisle, quick!"

It is with a stiff arm that Carlisle ends the woman's life. When he looks up from her now dead form, he sees an all too familiar face. This time, she does not smile or offer kisses. The woman looks like she is in pain, like she is barely able to hold something back.

In that moment, Carlisle realizes that his father is wrong. That the people he kills are human, and that his angel that he imagined to be his mother is the one thing he has been taught to hate above all else.

She is a vampire.


	4. Carlisle Chapter Four

1656

Carlisle becomes a studious boy. Because he is the son of a pastor, he has been educated just as well as the nobles. He can read and he can write; he knows how to read maps and even how to decipher Bible code, which is how pastors sometimes send coded messages. On top of that, he can speak not only English but Latin and Italian fluently.

For reasons his father did not understand, when he was fourteen, Carlisle begged to be taught French. Before that summer was over, his father found a tutor for him, and before his fifteenth birthday, Carlisle had become fluent in that, too.

He spends his days holed up in the great book rooms that only pastor and wealthy children have access to. More often than not, Carlisle can be found sitting in an alcove, his sheathed sword hanging off the side, his fair crown of waves bent over some thick leather-bound book. And, more often than not, when the clock strikes noon, he is joined for lunch by a girl.

This girl is named Elizabeth, and with her red, red hair, blue eyes and freckles, she is everything that the vampire woman who haunts Carlisle's dreams is not. Elizabeth is alive, and the daughter of a baron. And every day of that summer, she brings peaches and apples, slices of bread and good dairy cheese, and always a container of still-warm tea. She is the only one who is able to draw Carlisle away from his books.

With her sweet, soft voice and pink cheeks and pink lips, Carlisle decides _she_ is the prettiest girl he's ever seen. One day, as they sit outside, he picks her a bouquet of pink and white wildflowers. She smiles and tells Carlisle he's the sweetest boy, and so unlike the noble sons who look at all the girls like they are entitled to take them.

When he is sixteen, Carlisle falls in love. It's the sweet, first love. The kind that makes him think of her even when he's lost in his world of study. The kind that makes Carlisle do stupid, reckless things that would make his father frown with disapproval. Like the night that he steals away from home when there is a meteor shower.

Carlisle no long fears the night. Even though the woman who haunts him is not the angel he thought, he also knows from a hunt shortly after he turned sixteen that she protects him. The werewolf had come out of nowhere, killing Robert, his hunting partner. The beast was about to start in on Carlisle too, when out of nowhere came the woman, easily and cleanly killing the mutt before his fangs reached Carlisle's neck. Shocked into stillness, Carlisle stood frozen as the woman again placed a kiss to his forehead. Her eyes were the brightest red he had ever seen.

On the night of the meteor shower, he tosses rocks at Elizabeth's window until she opens it, confused but smiling, her hair mussed and in her nightgown. She blushes and closes the window when she sees Carlisle down below. Moments later, she throws it open. "Catch me?" she whispers down to him. "Always."

That night, they lay amongst the grass and wildflowers of summer, watching the stars fall and whispering wishes to each other. Carlisle does not think life can get any better.


	5. Carlisle Chapter Five

1657

What Carlisle never anticipated was life getting _worse._ At seventeen, he decides he wants to marry Elizabeth. He really should, anyway, after what they did one night in the book room where he spends most of his time. In their minds, that night makes them more married than if a pastor declared they were. He's going to tell her they should one winter day as they walk around town, but…

Elizabeth begins to cough. This isn't really anything of concern for winter. Lots of people have colds. But Elizabeth's cough goes on and on, even when Carlisle rubs her back. When she pulls her hand away from her mouth when the fit finally ends, it's stained red with her blood. Upon the sight, Elizabeth faints. Carlisle runs with her in his arms, a desperate boy, and takes her to the doctor. But he already knows he'll say the words everyone fears. _Sweating sickness._

Elizabeth will be lucky to see Carlisle's eighteenth birthday, which comes in February, months before her sixteenth in June. With the month being December, she's only given a little over two month to live. When she dies before the New Year, something inside good, sweet Carlisle Cullen dies with her. With his knowledge he has gained from reading legends and myths and the Holy Bible, he quickly becomes the best hunter in his father's team. He devotes himself to this and nothing else. His biggest prize is his most elusive; the vampire woman who he long ago fancied to be his mother.

Where before, Carlisle dreaded inheriting the family business, he now looks forward to the day.


	6. Carlisle Chapter Six

1660

The day comes the year Carlisle turns twenty. After a hunt for a vampire, a _real_ vampire, his father's leg is deemed useless. It has been crushed by the monster before Carlisle and the others are able to burn it to pieces. The doctors amputate it, fitting him with a wooden peg and a cane so he can still get around. However, he loses his life's passion in the process. One day, when he is alone in the house, he takes his own life.

In a letter he leaves to Carlisle, he warns him not to end up like him. To find love again, before the hunt is all he has. But for Carlisle, it's already too late. Like father like son. The hunt is already all Carlisle has, and it will be for the next three years.

He becomes so adept at killing monsters that people around London fancy him a holy knight. On August 20th, 1660, Carlisle's childhood dream becomes true. King Charles II knights him, giving him the title of Sir Carlisle, Holy Protector of London. This, with his good looks, enamors women. But Carlisle has shelved Elizabeth's memory deep in his heart, and he only has eyes for one woman: The French vampire.

Carlisle imagines that finding her will be the best day of his life. He will finally be free. Maybe, if he's lucky, he'll even find love again.


	7. Carlisle Chapter Seven

1663

The day comes. Carlisle has finally tracked her to the sewers; he guesses she has exhausted all of her ruses as a villager and as a member of the royal court. What he does not guess is that it is his actions that have driven that coven of vampires to the sewers, for they fear him. And he certainly does not guess that they are starved for blood.

He goes alone. After all, this is his fight to end. His one-sided, delusional fight. Having pried open the entrance to the sewer, he slips in quietly. Silently, he thinks. What he does not know is that the vampires can hear his heart _thump-thump_ in his chest, that they can smell his sweet, hot blood. With great care, he shields his torch, looking this way and that for his prey.

The transition from hunter to hunted comes so quickly that Carlisle doesn't even have time to get his hands up. The fangs are already in his neck, his side, his thigh; anywhere the veins are thick and the blood runs close to the skin. There is only one thought he is able to form, and that, simply is _this is bad._ But, as quickly as they came, the fangs are ripped from him, leaving sloppy, seeping wounds over his body. Then _she_ is there, with her dark hair and her eyes now a pupil-less black. She is the one who rips them away and catches Carlisle when he finds he can no longer stand on his own two feet.

Silently, she picks him up. She isn't breathing, and she is at least a foot shorter than Carlisle, but he can feel both her stillness and her strength. Though he is twenty three, he feels all of two feet tall and two years old. She is murmuring words to him in French, but he hurts so much he doesn't even try to understand them.

Softly, softly, she places him in a hiding place inside a giant chest of potatoes. If the burning in his veins weren't so bad, Carlisle would question this place, but it is, so he doesn't. Just as she did the first day they met, the vampire places her hand atop his head and kisses his forehead. "I am sorry, _mon petit._"

Under a nest of potatoes, Carlisle hides for three days. He knows what is happening, but doesn't believe it. Over and over in his head, he recites prayers to God, asking that this end, that it not happen. When the sun sets on the third day, all the fire has left his body. He feels strong and his now sharpened senses scare him. Under the cloak of night, he steals away to the forest, only one thought on his mind: suicide.

Carlisle Cullen is now a vampire, but that doesn't mean he likes it. That doesn't mean he won't do everything in his power to undo this bad stroke of luck.


End file.
